It's been over 250 years since anyone's heard from the Mad King. But the Guild Wars spirit of Halloween is far from dead, as we'll learn next week when Guild Wars 2 kicks off its first Halloween event.

The event, named "Shadow of the Mad King," will likely see the return of the pumpkin-headed spirit. How he'll look after over 250 years is anyone's guess.

In addition to the Mad King's impending return, ArenaNet is preparing a number of other occasion-specific events, plus new items to purchase in the Black Lion store. Beginning October 22 and through October 31, players will see parts of Tyria transformed, and anyone who played the original Guild Wars knows Lion's Arch will be absolutely insane (dig the concept art below).

New jumping puzzles, bosses, mini-dungeons, and achievements will be showing up across a number of maps. In PVP, paid tournaments will be available for five-man teams:

Paid tournaments will be available for competitive, five-person teams. These tournaments require tickets to enter and give better prizes than normal tournaments. Participating teams will earn qualifier points that will allow them to compete in future, larger tournaments. Tournament tickets can be earned from winning normal tournaments or purchased in the Gem Store.

The original, vanilla Guild Wars was my favorite game of all time. As a diehard fan, I have to say I'm somewhat disappointed in Guild Wars 2--the whole thing is too "airy-fairy", it just feels like it lacks substance. The big mainstays in GW1 like FoW, UW, and Sorrow's Furnace for PvE and Tombs/HA and GvG for PvP just aren't there in GW2. The whole sense of there being something to strive for/something that you can call a real achievement seems to be completely absent in the sequel.

I actually haven't played for a few weeks now. After hitting level 80 and not having too much fun with end game content, creating a new character, by that time new games came out so I've been spending my time on those. However, gotta love events like this! I missed out on the closing events (Hunger Games) from the Beta's so I'll def want to participate in this one.